Punjab Govt. to launch AgriHub to boost crops yield

Lahore: The Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) have great potential to increase the crop production in Punjab.

It was stated by the Chairman Punjab IT Board (PITB) while presiding over a meeting in his office last day. The meeting was also attended among others by the Special Secretary Agriculture Punjab Syed Gulzar Hussain and Director General (Extension) Agriculture Dr. Anjum Ali.  The mutual discussions concluded on launching a project named as AgriHub that would integrate all the ICT based initiatives in agriculture sector.

Explaining the details, Dr. Umar Saif said “the proposed AgriHub will consist of four major components. First one is the Soil Survey with Geo-tagging of farmlands that will be integrated with the imagery layer to be prepared by the Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO). It will help identify the deficiencies of major basic salts in agricultural lands. Under second component of the AgriHub, 2500 Android phones will be provided to the field staff of the Agriculture Extension department that will enable to bridge up the communication gap between farmers and the staff.

The smart phones will also monitor day to day meetings of field staff with farmers by evidence based data collected by PITB main dashboard. The third component is named as Agritube, that will be a agricultural social media tool and work just like Youtube. The videos of best farms will be prepared by a special film unit. It will create an atmosphere of competition among the farmers .It will share the best practices of farmers among all farmers’ community through internet and smart phone.”

Dr. Saif said that besides developing an informative website, PITB had also activated toll free Punjab Agriculture Helpline 0800-15000 and 0800-29000 and SMS based helpline service to resolve emergent problems of farmers in Punjab. He told that these helplines proved very instrumental in providing technical guidance about modern farm techniques and methods along with professional advices on weather, seasons, seeds, pesticides and crop diseases. He revealed that as many as 12000 telephone calls were being received from the farmers and replied by the experts daily.

Dr. Umar Saif said “attempts to understand and improve the effectiveness of ICT adoption for Agriculture have been at the forefront of Punjab Government policies as the Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif personally desires to improve the agriculture and livestock sector on solid footings in Punjab.

The AgriHub will be a great step in this direction as it will coordinate all efforts made so far to make the Agriculture department a state of the art public sector body committed to facilitate our farmers and cultivators through ICT tools.